Members of Congress called on President Donald Trump’s administration Wednesday to comply with a federal court order and return a Maryland man who was deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Glenn Ivey, both of Maryland, spoke at a Capitol Hill news conference along with the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported under suspicion that he was a member of the gang MS-13.
“We demand that Kilmar be returned home now,” Van Hollen said.
Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has denied he was a gang member, and the administration has acknowledged he was mistakenly included in a roundup of gang members.
“This so-called ‘administration error‘ has destroyed my family’s happiness,” Vasquez Sura said while surrounded by lawmakers, including members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The administration has said in court that it can’t do anything to return him to the United States.
“I think it’s time for them to put up or shut up,” Ivey said, referring to the administration. “Bring him back, have the day in court.”
The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday agreed to pause a lower court’s earlier midnight deadline for the administration to return Abrego Garcia.
“They sent him to the most notorious prison in the Western Hemisphere,” Ivey said. “It’s shocking, it’s horrible, it’s tragic and it needs to change immediately.”
Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a prison where inmates are never allowed outside.
Van Hollen and 24 senators this week wrote a letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Tedd Lyons, urging them to comply with a court order to return Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia and Vasquez Sura, an American citizen, and their three children live in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
In 2019, an immigration judge denied Abrego Garcia’s asylum request but granted him protected status from being deported back to El Salvador, due to concerns about gang persecution.
He had been checking in with ICE since then and had a work permit, which allowed him to work as a sheet metal apprentice in Maryland. However, he was arrested in Baltimore on March 12 while picking up his 5-year-old son, who has autism and other disabilities, from his grandmother’s house.
“Kilmar, if you can hear me, I’m still fighting for you,” his wife said Wednesday.
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